The Act party continues its decline as an organisational, electoral and ideological force. It's just had it's annual non-conference in Christchurch, whereby it has avoided the cost of a proper national conference by tacking on a closed-door meeting to a regional conference - see this report by John Armstrong (one of the few journalists to bother reporting on the party).
It seems that the party is a shadow of its former radical and robust self. Like every other party in Parliament it is currently obsessed with moderating itself and being 'more independent'. This means that it stands for little and attracts few voters, despite National moving well towards the centre in recent times. According to some - including those in the party - Act should be flourishing now that it has the rightwing space to itself. And Rodney Hide is still optimistic that it will benefit from National's ideological retreat. The problem is two-fold: 1) Act is also ideologically retreating into blandness and gimmickry, and 2) the tide has clearly gone out on New Right reforms. Neoliberalism has been both cemented in the new policy consensus of Labour and National, but also discredited within the eyes of the public, which means that very few want the Act-type agenda pushed further. So yet another party dies a sad and pathetic slow death with the usual situation of a party leader futilely languishing around for new ideas and a way forward but finding nothing but a focus on media stunts and attempts to keep an electorate seat.
